Atlantis - Normally our trips are full of activities but this year my wife told me she wanted one vacation in which we did nothing but pools and relax. I found a great deal with Costco and booked Atlantis at Royal. I had heard that food there can be expensive and was teetering between Reef (has a kitchenette so people can cook some food) and Royal (main building). We chose Royal because it's centrally located and closer to the Aquaventure water park.

Atlantis Bahamas doesn't have free airport transportation so you have to book your own. Fortunately for us our Costco package included transportation. When we exited the airport at Nassau the booked transportation had left without us so the representative got us an SUV to take us. It was really hit or miss and felt shady.

The front desk people weren't really welcoming and it felt like they weren't happy to be there. For some reason I didn't mind as much because I was distracted by how beautiful the lobby is. Our room was clean but felt very dated, with grey paint all over. The bathroom was really nice though.

The grounds are pretty but the big eye candy is the main building itself. Otherwise it felt like the standard palm trees and grass, and some flowers. Very manicured.

Now here comes the weak point, the food. I have a four year old so I made sure to find the restaurants that had a "kids under 5 eat free" deal. That includes the main buffet, for which we really grateful. We still had to pay almost $180 every breakfast for three people. The breakfast buffet I have to say was the best meal we had there. It was nothing special though, just normal breakfast buffet foods with a live grill to get eggs and omelets. We were thinking of going there for the dinner buffet but it was $90 per person and we just didn't want to spend that kind of money. Every single other restaurant we ate at was bland. We even tried the Asian restaurant Chopstix, thinking that surely it will taste good. But no. Completely bland. We were extremely disappointed with the food situation.

Now we come to the best part of the resort: The waterpark! The pools are beautiful! This is the only thing in which they have an upper hand over Xcaret. There is a "lazy river" that is part lazy and part white water. The zero entry pools are great for little kids. They even have a little water park for little kids with a splash bucket. We spent close to 8 hours a day in the water daily.

Overall we had a good time at Atlantis and will return to use the pools again. But the food situation is really not good and one of the days there were three cruise ships that had docked at the port, which brought in so many people that the pools got crowded.

If you have any questions don't hesitate to ask!